Today was the official first day of working on our new house. Of course since nothing is ever easy, working on the house necessarily followed a needlessly complicated process of calling Juan—the Columbian handyman who speaks very little English (and with whom we lived for a few months in the convent upon our arrival in Braddock)—trying to explain to him who I was in a combination of simple English and broken Spanish (hey, it’s Jack… soy Jack… su… companiero del edifico… from the convent *shit how do you say convent in Spanish?*… uh, Jack de Braddock..) so he could let us into the convent to pick up Garrett’s tools, and biking in the snow to Dave’s house to get the key from Garrett.

Once Welch and I finally got inside there was only about an hour of daylight left, so we trudged up to the attic, grabbed a handful of screwdrivers, and inaugurated the use of Welch’s DeWalt boombox by jamming everyone’s favorite construction-and-demolition-themed hardcore band: Count Me Out. We got all of the electrical fixtures off of the trim just in time for the sun to disappear behind our good buddy Edgar Thomson, and in the process managed to snap a few pictures of ourselves in matching boots and jackets (expect that this will be a consistent theme in the unfolding tale of 2 Wood). Sadly (for several reasons), I have work tomorrow morning, but hopefully now that we’ve set things in motion I’ll come home to find demolition well under way, in accordance with Newton’s predictions regarding diy home renovations (see Principia Timallenica). No one in the world thinks I’m as funny as I do.